OCTOBER 31, 2020

Top Stories

Finance & Investment

What to Know About How Self-Directed IRAs Can Be Used to Invest in Real Estate

By Patricia Kirk, Contributing Writer

Self-directed IRAs, unlike the traditional kind, can open up the possibility of buying real estate directly for individual investors. To gain an understanding of how SDIRA’s work when investing in real estate, NREI asked Meg O’Connor Zwick, a senior vice president and director of client services at Millennium Trust Company who specializes in directed-custodian services for IRA investments, to share her knowledge about this investment option.

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Office

Law Firms Are Dumping a Significant Amount of Office Space

By Patricia Kirk, Contributing Writer

The prevalence of remote working under COVID-19 and expected layoffs are leading law firms to downsize their real estate by up to 40 percent.

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Multifamily

Despite the Crisis, Some Apartments Traded During the Third Quarter

By Bendix Anderson, Contributing Writer

Buyers have closed these deals to buy apartment properties with help from new capital from investors.

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Analysis

Retail

Growing Number of Landlords Are Offering Restaurants Percentage-Only Rent

By John Egan, Contributing Writer

Some restaurant landlords are temporarily switching from fixed-rate rents to rents based only on a share of the tenant’s gross sales or revenue, in an effort to help these businesses survive.

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Finance & Investment

Nuveen Real Estate CIO Carly Tripp: “It’s Definitely a Good Time to Potentially Add Real Estate to Your Portfolio”

By John Egan, Contributing Writer

The recession triggered by the coronavirus pandemic may have flustered some commercial real estate investment professionals. Not Carly Tripp, though. In a Q&A, NREI chatted with Tripp about Nuveen Real Estate’s strategy, as well as why she thinks it’s still a good time to invest in commercial real estate, which sectors Nuveen favors and frowns upon, and how the company is communicating with clients amid economic turmoil.

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Commentary

Finance & Investment

Creating the Groundwork for Success (Special Series on Crowdfunding, Part Two)

By Adam Gower, Ph.D., Contributing Columnist

In the second article in a seven-part series on real estate crowdfunding, Adam Gower writes about how raising money online is no different from anything you’ve done before. It just leverages technology to scale the effort.

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Alternative Properties

In a COVID-19 World, Hotel Owners Must Be Wary of Vulture Funds

By Luis Flores and Teo Victoria

Hotel owners and investors face a business landscape that has drastically changed this year.

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Real Estate Services

Cannabis Tenants and Sale Leasebacks—Potential Strategies When Tenants Face Financial Distress

By William A. Organek and Claudia Z. Springer

As some cannabis tenants struggle, here’s how landlords can deal with their unique legal status.

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Podcast

Office

NREI's Common Area: Is the Office Dead?

By NREI Staff

In this episode of the Common Area podcast, David Bodamer is joined by Joe Brady, the CEO of the Americas for The Instant Group, to discuss whether workers in the knowledge economy will ever make a full return to the office, the rise of suburban flexible office spaces and how corporate real estate leaders are re-imagining the design of the traditional office space.

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NREI Wire

Brookfield Pays $365 Million for Facebook Office Outside Seattle

Bloomberg

A real estate fund backed by Brookfield Asset Management Inc. is buying an office in a Seattle suburb leased to Facebook Inc., a sign that commercial-property markets are thawing for some buildings after the pandemic put a chill on deals.

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12 Must Reads for the CRE Industry Today

By NREI Staff

Some New York City companies are offering extra incentives to get workers to return to the office, according to The New York Times. Restaurants and retailers face new restrictions as new virus cases mount, reports the Wall Street Journal. These are among today’s must reads from around the commercial real estate industry.

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